


and the shore tugs at my heart

by oisugasuga



Series: Seawater and Oranges [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 05:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9371078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oisugasuga/pseuds/oisugasuga
Summary: "The sea misses you," Suga blurts, flustered, before he can remember that Oikawa is a human, that he won’t possibly understand that it’s a farewell message, and it’s Oikawa’s turn to look perplexed, his eyebrows rising in surprise.Suga turns away quickly, ears burning, begins to swim away, his heart thudding, and is stopped when Oikawa speaks quickly."Wait," he says, twisting to see Suga, who’s already a few feet away, his eyes wide with amethyst clouds of desperation. "Will I see you again?"





	

Suga wakes up with a crick in his neck and a corresponding bad temper.

 

Sunlight filters down through the water farther out, where the entrance to the cove yawns open, and once Suga has rubbed at his eyes and stretched his arms over his head, he sees with gracious relief that the ocean has settled down, no more giant waves crashing into each other or cracks of thunder.

 

He lingers down under the water, smooths his hands over his tail to check for loose scales, touches his fingertips to the center of his forehead where the human had hit him and winces when it hurts, a bruise no doubt forming there.

 

He’s stalling and he knows it, his entire body begging him to swim away, to leave and hope the human can get back by himself.

 

Maybe if Suga leaves now, the human will think everything from last night was a dream, will believe that being battered and thrown into a cove by the storm had left him dehydrated, concussed, disoriented enough to imagine speaking with a merman.

 

But just as soon as that thought process goes through Suga’s mind, he remembers the first words the man had spoken upon waking.

 

_"I knew you were real."_

 

No, Suga knows that even if he were to leave now and never show his face to the human again, the man wouldn’t let go of his memories from the night before, would never disregard them as mere hallucinations and go back to believing that fairy tales were just fairy tales like everyone else.

 

Suga groans, buries his face in his hands and fights the urge to scream in frustration.

 

Why can’t he just swim and find the human’s boat, lead it back here and pretend that the tide had pulled it in?

 

That method solves both issues of getting the human home and of not abandoning him to the fickleness of the sea.

 

But for some reason, that idea leaves a bitter taste in the back of Suga’s mouth, leaves him feeling oddly unsatisfied, and he finds himself thinking of reasons why the plan wouldn’t work instead of immediately acting on it.

 

The boat probably still isn’t in one piece anyways. It would be no use to drag a few planks of wood back here.

 

Suga stares down at his hands, irritated at himself and still furious with the human, tries not to think of the only other human he’s really seen in his life, the one that walked away, even if it was at his mother’s pleading, and then feels more anger settle in his stomach, at his parents, at the ache in his chest that he’s never really been able to erase, the torn longing to be here at sea and also there on land.

 

After a few moments, after Suga has squeezed his fingers together hard enough to turn his knuckles white, he shakes himself out of it, runs a hand through his hair and swims in a twirl to dislodge the sand sticking to his tail and his skin.

 

There’s no use agonizing over it now, he tells himself.

 

He has a human to get home first.

 

 

 

The human is sleeping when Suga peers over the edge of the cove floor cautiously, his legs stretched out in front of him, his back against one of the walls, his eyelashes casting dark lines across his cheeks, delicate streaks of ink.

 

He’s fairly close to the water, as if he had fallen asleep waiting for Suga to come back, watching the surface and hoping, and the thought almost causes Suga’s stomach to twist with guilt.

 

Instead Suga swallows the feeling down, remembers the human’s words from before and scowls, his forehead furrowing, webbed fingers tapping the cove floor in irritation, even as curiosity burns in the back of his throat.

 

He’s never really seen a human up close. He’s heard stories from other merfolk who are daring enough to swim near the shorelines, his friends Futakuchi and Yamaguchi being prime examples, and he’d learned the basics from his lessons back when he was a child, but having an actual, breathing one this close to him is very, very new.

 

Against his will, Suga finds himself edging closer, studying the differences he can see between the two of them.

 

The human has a pleasant face, Suga admits to himself begrudgingly, elegant cheekbones and a pretty mouth, his dark hair dry now and curling against his temple, a graceful neck and broad shoulders and slender torso, but he’s lacking the shimmer of scales under his eyes like the ones Suga has, the streaks of jade that are barely visible under his skin in the sunlight, the ones that stand out more when night falls.

 

His fingers are odd too, one hand lying over his stomach, no webbing in between them, just empty space.

 

Suga’s eyes travel lower, to the things called "legs", and he frowns, tries to imagine using them to move and shudders, his tail flicking behind him in dissatisfaction.

 

It would take too long to get somewhere with those, he thinks, reaching out without thinking and poking the nearest one with a finger.

 

As soon as he touches him, the human jerks, his eyes flying open in surprise even though he looks fully awake, no trace of sleep lingering in his gaze, and Suga flinches backwards, realizes belatedly that the man had only been pretending, that he might have even stayed up the entire night if the exhaustion present in the slump of his shoulders and the shadows under his eyes is any indication.

 

Suga bares his teeth in warning, feeling foolish for being caught so off guard, for touching the human, his tail twitching to dive back under the water, to hide, but the man doesn’t move, just watches him calmly, openly, the same irritating expression of wonder from the night before passing over his face in a streak of cerise and then disappearing, regret taking its place.

 

"Please don’t go again," he speaks, voice soft and placating, gentle, Suga hovering a few feet away and schooling his features into a blank expression.

 

The blood from the cut across the man’s cheek has dried, has turned dark garnet, the flush of possible infection staining the skin around it, and Suga’s eyes linger there, that same surge of guilt from before resurfacing.

 

Suga averts his gaze.

 

"I know what I did was wrong," the man continues, speaking slowly, carefully, measuring the words on his tongue, and Suga narrows his eyes, waits to hear some kind of flimsy excuse, or empty words of apology, crossing his arms over his chest, water dripping from his elbows.

 

"And I never intended to put someone else’s life in danger, _your_ life in danger, I wasn’t thinking about the consequences."

 

There it is, the "I didn't mean for this to happen, I wasn’t thinking", the useless words, the ones that don’t take full responsibility for the disaster, but before Suga can offer a retort, before he can get truly angry again, the human keeps speaking, sitting up, his face more serious than Suga has seen it in the short time they’ve known each other.

 

"This was my last hope," the man says, his eyes imploring Suga to stay, to listen, nothing but sincerity in his tone.

 

When Suga remains where he is, the man runs a shaky hand through his hair, looks down at the ground and then back up, the sunlight filtering down from the ceiling illuminating the curve of his neck, the length of his eyelashes, painting the tips in gold and making his eyes glimmer.

 

"I have a son," he confesses, and it’s the last thing Suga had been expecting to hear, the words echoing around the small space.

 

The human fidgets, slides his fingers together so he can squeeze until his knuckles turn white, the next words coming out with difficulty, but as if he’s said them a million times before, pain hidden underneath his voice.

 

"He’s actually my nephew, but his mother passed away shortly after he was born, so I’ve raised him as my own."

 

Suga’s arms drop to his sides, his anger quickly ebbing away, replaced with a sharp pang of sympathy and cloudy confusion.

 

What does this man’s son have to do with nearly killing himself in a storm?

 

The man sighs, as if he can read Suga’s mind, his mouth twisting up wryly.

 

"My sister never told our parents who the father of her son was, never really explained where he had gone, but the night that my nephew was born, the night she left, she told me, made me promise not to tell anyone else."

 

Suga’s heart is suddenly pounding at his throat, his pulse racing through his veins dizzily, because he’s beginning to piece together the next words that are going to come from this man’s mouth, words that threaten to change everything about Suga’s disposition towards the human.

 

"He was from the sea, just like you," the man murmurs, his eyes locking with Suga’s over the short space that separates them, shining and bright and truthful.

 

Suga’s stomach drops, his breath hitching in his throat, thoughts thrown into chaos even as the human continues his explanation, his words coming out rushed now, hurried, desperate.

 

Someone just like him, Suga thinks speechlessly, trying to imagine it. Someone who must also be torn between the sea and land, but who lives in an entirely different world from the one Suga’s grown up in.

 

The mere idea leaves Suga reeling, almost causes him to miss the rest of the human’s story.

 

"My mother, my son’s grandmother, she thinks he should be raised in the city, with her and my father. She wants us to move from the coast, has for a while now, and these past few months I’ve hit hard times. It’s been harder to persuade her that here is home, that taking him from the sea will destroy him."

 

Suga looks up from where he’s been staring at the surface of the water, dazed, his eyelashes fluttering, registers the words a few seconds after they leave the man’s mouth.

 

"I’ve tried everything else," the human says, quietly, and Suga’s mind finally catches up, his thoughts leaving his mouth before he can close it.

 

"You believed your sister, even if what she told you was impossible," he says, more of a statement than a question, and the man startles, surprised by the sound of Suga’s voice, before he smiles tentatively and nods.

 

"My sister never lied to me," is what he says as explanation, simple, direct, as if it’s obvious.

 

"And finding one of us, what would that accomplish?" Suga asks, already suspecting the answer.

 

The man sighs, runs his hand through his hair again, a nervous gesture.

 

"I never told anyone my sister’s secret," he answers. "And I’ve never seen any sign that my son is what she said he was, not in the seven years I’ve raised him. But I know he needs the ocean. I know he wouldn’t be able to stand it if I took him away."

 

Suga imagines being ripped from the water, being taken someplace where he could not see it, even for a day, and he shudders inwardly, feels an ache bloom under his ribs and linger, a bitter taste in his mouth.

 

"I know that if I could show my mother the truth, if I could have proof of it when I told her, that she would understand," the human finishes, his words intertwined with the gentle push and pull of the water against the cove, the ocean hushing against the rocks and refracting the sunlight, throwing glittering embers against the walls, decorating the human’s hair and glinting off of Suga’s scales under the water.

 

Suga stays silent, and the human doesn’t speak further, just watches him quietly.

 

There is no doubt in Suga’s mind that this man wishes to bring him to shore, to show him to his mother and reveal one of the ocean’s greatest kept secrets, and the idea leaves Suga uncomfortable, vulnerable, even as his heart hurts for the son he has not met, for the child who is just like him.

 

For a few moments, the only sound is the lull of the waves, the whistling of the wind over the top of the cove, and then the human coughs, the sound ricocheting off of the walls and Suga is reminded that he needs to get him to shore.

 

Suga imagines a seven-year-old boy waiting for his father, sees eyes filled with tears and a wrecked boat washing up on shore, and he dives quickly, swims out of the cove into the open water, surfacing a few yards out and glancing around.

 

The sea is calm today, the storm leaving it nearly flat, the waves colored turquoise and seagrass-green, bobbing up and down gently, a soothing lullaby that Suga’s fallen asleep to most nights.

 

He looks around, tries to spot land, but there’s nothing but an open stretch of water in all directions, a glimmering, sparkling mirror that reflects the white clouds in the sky.

 

Suga glances over his shoulder towards the mouth of the cove, can’t see in due to the shadows covering the entrance, and then dives under again, surfacing within the cave once more, the human breathing an audible sigh of relief when Suga’s silver hair appears again.

 

"Which way is your home?" Suga asks, and the human grimaces, rubs the back of his neck.

 

"I don’t know," he says honestly, peering out of the cove and squinting. "I got turned around last night."

 

Suga resists the urge to sigh in exasperation, swallows down his sharp words, and instead blinks at the man.

 

"I’ll have to find something to pull you on," he says, trying to shake the uncomfortable weight on his shoulders, the unease he has from even talking to a human, let alone swimming one to shore.

 

All of this is everything Suga had promised himself to never get involved with when he was younger. All of this is strange and new and terrifying.

 

_"Just get him to the shore,"_ he tells himself, straightening his spine and pushing his wet bangs back from his eyes. _"And then you can go home and pretend none of this ever happened."_

 

"Okay," the human breathes, and Suga pauses in his thinking to realize that, once again, the man is looking at him as if Suga is a dream, as if he can see through to Suga’s soul and has found it beautiful, and Suga scowls at him.

 

"I have one condition," he states brusquely, crossing his arms over his chest again, curving his shoulders in as if that’ll hide the shimmer of his tail.

 

The human sits up straighter, listening.

 

For the first time in several hours, Suga lets his lips curve up into a smile, one that is more sharp-edged than it is sweet.

 

"No talking the entire way back," Suga says, tone completely serious, "or I’ll leave you to swim back on your own."

 

 

 

The shoreline looms into sight quickly, suddenly, a squiggle of dark lines and curves, the small town the man belongs to, someplace named Otaru that Suga had known the general direction of, nestled between the ocean and a range of looming mountains, their shapes just dark, hulking shadows from here.

 

Suga breathes out in relief even as his heart stutters in his chest.

 

He turns to where the man is holding onto a large piece of wood, a chunk of the boat that Suga had managed to find floating aimlessly several miles from the cove that still had a length of rope attached to it, points towards the land and says, "Is this it?"

 

The man pushes his wet hair back from his face, blinks and then beams, nodding, and Suga surveys how much father they need to go.

 

He doesn’t feel comfortable getting too close, so once he’s pulled the man a few more yards, he stops, swims back to the fragment of boat.

 

"This is as far as I’ll go," he tells him, keeping his voice firm, watching different emotions flicker through the man’s sea amber eyes, gratefulness, worry, regret, but the man only nods in agreement, asking one question Suga hadn’t been expecting.

 

"What’s your name?" the human asks, his legs floating behind him, fingers that are wrinkled with water clutching onto the edge of the wood, some of the blood from his cut washed away with the waves.

 

Suga stares at him, debates with himself for one, two, three seconds, and then murmurs, "Suga."

 

A blinding smile covers the man’s face, makes him look ten years younger, makes his eyes shine and overshadow his unkempt state, and Suga feels his heart lurch for no reason.

 

"I’m forever indebted to you, Suga," he says, a drop of seawater rolling down from his hair to trace a path along his cheek, down his chin, until it slides down the curve of his throat. "My name’s Oikawa Tooru."

 

Suga stares at the hand the man outstretches, bewildered, his brow furrowing because he’s unsure what the human is waiting for him to do.

 

Oikawa laughs a little after a moment of nothing but the endless up and down of the waves, the sound pleasant, his eyelashes sticking together with salt.

 

"Here," he says, reaching forward slowly, slowly, Suga watching him with wary eyes but not moving, his heart pounding against his chest when the human’s fingers dip under the water and trail over his wrist, sliding down until their hands are clasped together oddly.

 

Suga doesn’t move, can’t move, Oikawa’s skin warm even though he’s been in the water for the past hour, soft against his, watches silently, speechlessly as he lifts Suga’s hand out of the water and moves it up and down before he loosens his grip.

 

Suga slides his hand away quickly, blinks at Oikawa for a few more seconds, his thoughts scattered, skin tingling, unsure what to think, what to feel, a million questions suddenly bubbling up his throat, and he almost asks one, almost opens his mouth and speaks before he catches sight of the horizon of the shore in his peripheral vision, before he’s reminded that he needs to go.

 

Oikawa is watching him with a strange expression, as if he knows exactly what Suga is thinking, and Suga gets the odd feeling that he had gotten earlier when he had realized that the man had been pretending to sleep, the feeling that Oikawa is much more perceptive than he lets on to be, that maybe he had known the entire time that Suga wasn’t going to abandon him before Suga knew it himself.

 

"The sea misses you," Suga blurts, flustered, before he can remember that Oikawa is a human, that he won’t possibly understand that it’s a farewell message, and it’s Oikawa’s turn to look perplexed, his eyebrows rising in surprise.

 

Suga turns away quickly, ears burning, begins to swim away, his heart thudding, and is stopped when Oikawa speaks quickly.

 

"Wait," he says, twisting to see Suga, who’s already a few feet away, his eyes wide with amethyst clouds of desperation. "Will I see you again?"

 

The question hides another, unspoken one.

 

_"Will you help me?"_

 

Suga pauses, hovers, bites hard enough on his lower lip to taste blood, his eyes flitting towards the land against his will, that strange ache in his ribs that he’s learned to suppress over the years suddenly returning as if it had never left.

 

He looks at Oikawa, the two of them silent, the thrum of unspoken words passing between the space separating them.

 

Suga should be saying no, should be saying it now and then disappearing the way he’s supposed to, but what comes out of his mouth is anything but what he should say, three words that hold endless possibilities, endless risk, that leave Suga breathless.

 

"I don’t know."

 

And then he’s gone, flicking his tail to douse Oikawa with seawater once more, the flash of pale green gone in seconds as if he had never been there.

 

 

 

"Koushi!"

 

Suga spins towards the familiar voice, an automatic smile lifting his mouth when he sees his mother, her rose tail pushing her forward quickly until she has Suga by the arms, holding him out to study his face, the worry in her eyes quickly dissipating when she realizes that he is unharmed.

 

"Where have you been?" she questions frantically, pulling him in to her chest, the smell of salt spray and cardamom enveloping Suga, sweet and familiar, her long, ebony hair flowing out behind her in twirls and tangles, lovely and decorated with ropes of cloud-gray pearls. "I’ve been looking everywhere, I even asked Daichi to send out scouts to look for you, and your elbow, what happened, are you hurt anywhere else?"

 

Suga smiles gently at his mother as she grabs his arm, the one he had scraped along the cove floor, the skin there already healing although Suga suspects it will leave a silver scar.

 

"I’m fine, mother," he tells her, letting her spin him around, checking for other injuries, her brows furrowed. "I’ll tell you the whole story as soon as you tell Daichi to call everyone back in."

 

Ayaka frowns at him as soon as Suga’s facing her again, poking him in the ribs and batting at his tail with her own.

 

Suga yelps, tries to squirm away, but his mother still has a strong grip on his hands.

 

"The next time you run off like that, I’m going to lock you at home for a month," she scolds, her concern finally giving way for irritation, pretty features twisting into a scowl that everyone says is a carbon copy of Suga’s, and vice versa. "Were you chasing the dolphins again? Or searching for sea glass?"

 

_"Larchmere-colored sea glass, hanging from a cord around his neck."_

 

Ayaka clicks her tongue, lets go of Suga and turns away, giving him a sharp glance over her shoulder, the pearls in her hair catching the luminescence coming from the caves around them and glowing, breaking Suga from his distracted thoughts.

 

"We’ll talk about this later," she promises, and then she’s gone, swimming away in a cloud of bubbles to go talk to Daichi, Suga’s best friend and the fairly new leader of their clan.

 

Suga sighs, rubs at his eyes, exhaustion suddenly weighing him down, his arms sore and his tail tired, and he turns to swim to the home he shares with his mother, the one he’s lived in all twenty-five years of his life.

 

The place he’s called home all these years isn’t very large, but it’s soothing, comfortable, close-knit and filled with merfolk that Suga considers family.

 

Daichi’s grandfather had been the one to find the cliff-face they had built their homes into, all of them submerged away from prying eyes, the interconnected caves illuminated during the day by the sunlight that filtered down through the blue-green water and at night by bioluminescent flowers that grew from the craggy, black rock, their petals the color of starlight, intertwining in bunches and intricate lines throughout the entire clan.

 

Sometimes Suga likes to lay awake and stare at them, pretending that he’s looking at the night sky as the current of the sea wraps around him, rocks him to sleep and settles close to his heart.

 

The cliff face curves like a half-moon, creating a semi-circle that is surrounded in the front by a large, vivid-green kelp forest, the merchildren laughing and flitting in and out as they play hide-and-seek, and Suga smiles fondly as he swims by, remembers the days that he used to do the same with Daichi and Futakuchi and Yamaguchi.

 

As if they’ve heard his thoughts, two darting figures suddenly sideswipe him in a flurry of arms and tails, emerging from the kelp, identical mischievous grins on the two mermen’s faces.

 

"Suga!" one of them yells right into his ear.

 

"Suga-wuga," the other one laughs, spinning all three of them around, and Suga yelps in surprise before he chokes on a laugh of his own, rolling his eyes and pretending to attempt to escape from the chokehold the two have on him.

 

Yamaguchi lets go of him first, his wisteria-lilac tail contrasting sharply with the ink-black of his unruly hair, a lock of it standing straight up, and Suga knows from years of trying that it’ll never be flattened down.

 

"Where have you been?" he demands, sounding just like Ayaka, his lavender eyes wide and flickering down Suga’s body, looking for injuries, until he looks back up, satisfied that nothing is seriously wrong.

 

"Yeah, everyone was worried sick," Futakuchi adds, finally letting go of Suga and leaning back to look him in the face, his usual snark nowhere in sight, replaced with the same concern Suga has seen ever since he got home.

 

Suga feels bittersweet guilt rise in the back of his throat, a feeling that’s become much too common in the past two days, and he does his best to smile reassuringly at his friends, letting Futakuchi’s hands slip from his shoulders so that he can spin around and then say, "I’m okay, see? I just got lost yesterday in the storm and had to spend the night in a cove until it passed."

 

It’s not exactly a lie, but it’s not the entire truth either, and Suga waits for Futakuchi and Yamaguchi to stare at him for a few seconds before they seem convinced, rushing forward to hug him again, Futakuchi’s ruby tail pushing him too fast and nearly sending the three of them tumbling back into the kelp forest.

 

Suga lets himself laugh with his friends, lets them talk about everything that’s happened since he’s been gone, and tries to forget about a pair of sea amber eyes, about three words he should’ve never let leave his mouth.

 

_I don’t know._

 

 

 

A few weeks pass without incident.

 

Suga assures everyone he meets that he’s fine, tells the same half-story over and over again, has to try extra hard to convince Daichi because they’ve been together since they were small enough to fit into the gaps between the caves, playing hide-and-seek there on multiple occasions, flitting in and out of the shadows, forming secret meeting spaces in the grottos they would find hidden like brightly-colored jewels.

 

But everyone eventually believes his story, claps him on the shoulder or hugs him and then goes about their day, and Suga fits right back into his daily routine.

 

Everything is normal, everything is right, everything is back to the way it should be and Suga should be happy, should be content to wipe away the images of a man lost at sea, of a man talking about his son with the fondest smile gracing his face, of a man who had asked him if Suga would come back, if he would ever come to the shore again, Suga should be trying to forget, should be letting the memories and the words all drift away with the current.

 

And he does, for a while.

 

He throws himself into his work, into teaching the merchildren about the traditions of the sea, about the lessons that have been passed down from their ancestors, throws himself into helping Daichi with the small issues that are never-ending in the clan, into spending time with Yamaguchi and Futakuchi exploring the ocean for food, for anything they’re running out of in the medicinal stores kept by the silver-finned Semi, who thanks them with a grateful and tired smile every time they drop off multi-colored sponges and rolls of seaweed and seashells filled with the dark, silky mud that coats some parts of the sea floor.

 

Suga goes to bed exhausted every night, wakes up with a new set of tasks to complete the next morning, and ignores the horrible ache that never seems to leave, that hits him the hardest when he’s not expecting it, when he’s distracted or is alone.

 

But aside from that, Suga is mostly able to throw his soul back into the ocean, soak it with seawater and salt and brine and forget, forget about the fact that he had seen land in the first time since he was a child, the fact that there’s someone else out there, just like him.

 

Except Suga is lying to himself as well.

 

He hasn’t forgotten, he can’t forget, he can’t even push the thoughts away at night, no matter how tired he is, no matter how much he has to do the next day.

 

They linger, coil gold strings around his ribcage and hover, fill his stomach with splashes of color, larchmere and amber and garnet, trace the dark line of a horizon along his spine.

 

And one night it all becomes too much.

 

 

 

_Suga is struggling to keep up, his tail propelling him through the water, the amaranth flash of his mother’s tail just ahead of him._

 

_They’re both swimming under the waves, and the surface is oddly still, as if it’s been frozen, a larchmere-colored, glass ceiling that Suga can see dazzling flashes of light through, sparks that are the white-hot color of stars exploding above both of their heads against a plum-colored sky._

 

_Suga swims harder, faster, desperation filling his lungs, burning, stinging, and he’s about to lose sight of his mother, about to get left behind, when, suddenly, the scene shifts to a shoreline, the waves moving again, splashing up onto the sand and painting it gold._

 

_Suga hovers, his tail scraping along the bottom of the shallows, watches his mother pull a man from the sea, watches her cry over him, the tears dropping and then stopping mid-air, hovering around her face, glittering against the darkness of her hair, as if time has halted, even as the tide continues to flow and Suga’s heart continues to pound._

 

_He tries to pull himself up on shore, tries to get to his parents as his father chokes and sits up, vomiting silver-colored water that’s the same shade as his hair, the same shade as Suga’s hair._

 

_But the weight of his tail is gone, and when Suga turns to look back at it, bewilderment throwing him off-balance, the jade green is gone, disappeared._

 

_In its place are a pair of pale, bare legs._

 

_Suga barely has time to react, has just enough time to inhale sharply, the breath like jagged pieces of glass in his lungs, before his father’s voice reaches Suga’s ears, somehow traveling over the expanse of sand, words that are aimed at Suga’s mother, but that send pain lancing through Suga’s heart._

 

_"Will I see you again?"_

 

_Suga whips around to see them, tears burning behind his eyelids, but his parents are gone._

 

_In their place are Oikawa and a boy with the sea in his eyes but his feet firmly planted in the sand, the two of them holding hands._

 

_Just as Suga opens his mouth to speak, reaches his hand out, the two of them flicker and then wink out of existence, gone._

 

_And then the ocean is surging up, up, up, until it blocks out the sky, until it throws a shadow over the gold sand stained with silver, until Suga can see nothing but water, before it crashes over his head._

 

_Everything goes white._

 

 

 

Suga wakes with a gasp, blinks the sleep from his eyes, and looks around the room, tries to steady himself with the familiar glow of the ivory flowers twining and twirling above his head.

 

But the beating of his heart doesn’t slow down, the walls around him seem to close in, suffocating him, and before Suga can stop himself, he’s swimming out of his room, pushing through the curtain of kelp that covers the front entrance to the cave his mother and him live in, hoping that he doesn’t wake her up.

 

He feels like the entire ocean can hear the hammering of his heart against his chest, can taste his desperation, and knows what he’s getting ready to do, no matter how insane it is.

 

The ache he’s shoved down, the one he’s swallowed and tried to forget about, is worse now than it’s ever been, leaves him clutching at his chest, the breath ragged in his lungs.

 

A wall of green edged argent in the moonlight looms up in front of him, disrupting his thoughts.

 

Without fully realizing it, Suga has swam all of the way to the kelp forest, and he stops aburptly, his heart lurching into his throat, before he can go further, pauses there to try and get a grip on himself.

 

_"This is ridiculous,"_ he tells himself angrily. _"I need to go back, go to sleep, I’m just tired."_

 

But he doesn’t move, just stays as still as the cliff, stares into the depths of the ropes of kelp, his fingernails digging painfully into the skin over his heart.

 

Seconds, minutes, hours, years seem to pass, Suga teetering on the edge of something he doesn’t want to let go of, fingers digging into the ground to hold on hard enough to leave them bleeding.

 

And then a voice interrupts Suga’s panicked thoughts, breaks through the daze he seems to be stuck in.

 

"Suga," Daichi says, his brow furrowed when Suga spins around to find his best friend behind him, worry evident in the downward tug of his mouth and the shimmer of his eyes.

 

His sapphire tail pushes him forward until they’re close enough to reach out and grab the other, and Suga curls his hands into fists at his sides to resist doing so, to resist throwing himself at Daichi in the hopes that he could make all of this stop, make all of it go away because it hurts too much.

 

"Are you okay?" Daichi asks, and the question threatens to break Suga, to leave him sobbing and shaking, breaking into a million pieces, forever ripped between the sea and the shore.

 

Suga forces himself to smile, can feel how shaky and fake it is and knows that Daichi notices because he’s always noticed.

 

"I just had a nightmare," Suga reassures him. "I thought I’d swim around for a bit to calm down."

 

Daichi’s eyebrows raise in skepticism.

 

"A bad dream?" he asks, and Suga nods, bites his lower lip.

 

Daichi’s eyes don’t leave his face, one hand reaching out to grab Suga’s, the touch warm and familiar.

 

Suga lets himself be comforted by the fingers wrapped around his, lets his pulse slow and the tears threatening to break free subside.

 

"Something happened two weeks ago," Daichi suddenly says, the words knocking the breath from Suga’s lungs because Daichi isn’t asking a question.

 

He’s completely serious, his tone not leaving room for arguments.

 

"Did it have something to do with your father?" Daichi asks when Suga is silent, his voice low, gentle.

 

Suga looks down at their clasped hands, at Daichi’s warm skin and the white scar across the back of his knuckles that he had gotten from a scrape with a sea urchin, swallows past the lump in his throat.

 

Daichi is the only one Suga ever told the truth to, on the same day that Daichi got that scar coincidentally.

 

Suga remembers the two of them, younger, teenagers, spinning through warm water, the summer sun beaming down on their heads whenever they surfaced, the cry of birds and the laughter of Futakuchi and Yamaguchi farther off, remembers telling Daichi what his mother had told him so long ago, remembers Daichi not reacting in the way Suga had expected, no surprise or shock or, what Suga had feared the most, disgust.

 

_"Why?"_ Suga had asked him, confused, bewildered, unsure of why his best friend was still swimming circles around him, intent on continuing their game of tag.

 

And Daichi had shrugged as if the answer were simple, as if it were right there in Suga’s face, obvious.

 

_"You’re still you,"_ he had said simply.

 

"Suga."

 

Daichi’s voice jerks Suga back to the present, his thumb stroking the back of Suga’s hand reassuringly.

 

"Daichi," Suga says, not bothering to hide how shaky his voice is, "I have to go."

 

At Daichi’s expression, something torn between understanding and sorrow, Suga rushes to clarify, squeezing his fingers around Daichi’s, meeting his dark brown eyes.

 

"Not for long," he explains. "I just need to go meet someone, find some answers in a town on the coast, Otaru."

 

Suga isn’t even completely sure what he’s planning on doing once he gets there, but he knows that he can’t ignore the tug in his heart anymore, the one that pulls him in towards the land.

 

Daichi is silent for a long time, the two of them hovering in front of each other, his silhouette backlit by the starlight-glow coming from the caves.

 

And then he sighs, and Suga’s heart is in his mouth, waiting for Daichi to speak.

 

"As long as you’re safe," Daichi says, and Suga blinks at him a few times before a watery grin spreads over his face and he throws himself at him, wrapping arms around Daichi’s neck and burying his face into his chest, Daichi making a noise of surprise before he returns the embrace, squeezing hard enough around Suga’s ribs for it to hurt a little.

 

"But I won’t lie to your mother, Suga, or to the rest of the clan when they ask where’ve you gone," Daichi adds, his voice muffled in Suga’s hair, and Suga nods against his shoulder.

 

He wouldn’t ask Daichi to do that, would go back and say something to all of them himself, tell his mother where he’s going, but he knows that if he lingers any longer he’ll lose the courage to leave.

 

"Thank you," Suga whispers, brushes his lips over Daichi’s cheek and then disentangles himself before he can hold on and not let go.

 

Daichi smiles at him, tries to hide the shine of his own eyes, his lower lip quivering, and Suga laughs in an effort to comfort the both of them, punches his arm and says, "The sea misses you, you big crybaby."

 

Daichi huffs out a laugh of his own, pushes Suga back.

 

"You’d better get going before Futakuchi’s sixth sense sends him here or Yamaguchi wakes up with motherly instincts," Daichi teases, slowly swimming backwards, back towards the caves.

 

Suga holds his breath, keeps the smile firmly on his face even though his fingers are trembling, takes one last look at it all, at Daichi, before he turns around, towards the kelp forest, towards the shore.

 

"The sea misses you," Daichi calls out.

 

Suga takes a deep breath.

 

_"And so does the land,"_ he thinks.

 

And then he’s gone.

 

 

 

Otaru wavers into view, the horizon broken up by the bobbing of the waves, the moon casting silver and sapphire over everything, freezing it in time, and Suga keeps his eyes on the shore, lets the sea push him forward, forward, forward, gentle and soothing at his back, his hair dripping into his eyes, saltwater on his tongue.

 

He doesn’t look back, just lets himself move without thinking, lets the ache that blooms in his ribcage like amethyst flowers grow dimmer and dimmer the closer he gets.

 

And there, when Suga is feet away from the shallows, he sees him.

 

Suga isn’t surprised or shocked.

 

He had been expecting him to be there, waiting with his feet in the sand and his sea amber eyes peering out over the ocean, had known that he would never stop waiting for Suga to return because the love for his son overpowered everything else.

 

Suga waits for a few seconds, lets the current thrum against his back, lets the waves paint his skin in messy blushes of watercolors, lets himself close his eyes and just breathe.

 

And then he’s swimming again, closer, closer, closer, until Oikawa sees the flash of his jade tail, until sand scrapes along Suga’s stomach, until the two of them meet, Oikawa almost up to his knees in the waves, both wide-eyed and speechless.

 

And for a few, breathless seconds, only four words reverberate in Suga’s thoughts.

 

_The sea misses you._

**Author's Note:**

> day 7 of oisuga week: free prompt
> 
> this is so, so late, and it's not even finished yet smh... so yes, there will be a part three, but i am putting it on hold until i get the next chapter of "these stars here on earth" written because that's my number one priority rn
> 
> *sighs* i didn't mean to make this so long, but before i realized it i had added multiple (angsty) backstories, a merfolk clan, and a child, so the story must be written !(•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑
> 
> on a side note, but not any less important, thanks to all of you who have been so supportive and sweet, i'm sorry i haven't been able to respond to any comments or messages, but i'll get there eventually, so please don't think i'm ignoring you or anything, it's just taken longer to write chapters recently because the creative side of my brain decided to short-circuit at the end of oisuga week (・_・ヾ
> 
> as always, you can find my lovely blog [here](http://oisugasuga.tumblr.com/)


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